This is just one example, a very personal story, of what can and does go wrong in a world driven by our global Disrespect Philosophy and as a result, the long journey required to reverse the negative conditioning and experiences that not only disrespects all involved, but often causes irreparable harm that for others may never be resolved. Thankfully for me, overcoming and resolution are happening in my life … though not because I see myself as more fortunate than others, but simply because it is part of my vocation to experience what I have, learn what I can from it and write about it in order to help other people.

September 25, 2013

To My Creditors:

I am sorry that I owe you money, but I will gladly repay what I owe you with interest … when I am generating enough income to restore and keep myself in good health, so I can not only look after myself and my Dad, but also all my responsibilities, including debts incurred over the past year, plus hiring the extra care he needs when I am not available during his remaining months. In the meantime, I respectfully request you save your business money by informing your accounts department to not waste time or money with repetitive calls or mail outs since, with the exception of two companies so far, most calls and attempted conversations have been filled with disrespect and bullying behavior, neither of which will be successful in securing what you want till I have the time and energy to generate above poverty wages to pay the debt and accrued interest. To further encourage you to approve my request to stop the bullish harassment, I am providing you with a synopsis of events that led to the current circumstances.

To start off, as for our Dad, we are surprised he has persevered these past fourteen months considering the changes in his body and mind, but we also recognize that with all the falls on his head he has experienced in the past ten months, his skull will only take so much before it finally yields and he dies.

But backing up, a series of events in my early thirties, catapulted me from being a successful woman, earning $50,000 a year while also attending York University to become a psychologist, but who discovered in her second year she wanted to help people as a writer to a very wounded, jaded, hurt, angry and bitter woman who lost all her confidence and the little self-worth she had and took to drifting from many low-paying and/or temporary jobs in between studying art and staying away from people because of being shell shocked by the responses from people close to her when she decided to make some life-altering choices. The story goes back even further, which though interesting, is not necessary for you to read now, though you may desire to when it is presented in my next non-fiction book, DARK HORSES … which really isn’t just about me, but about many people and their experiences in the world we’ve created.

The knowledge of all this is important and relevant because rather than have assumptions made about me, this synopsis explains my lack of wealth before I moved back to Kincardine to help with my Dad and his life-taking diseases. I accepted a low-paying job and moved into an apartment to be near to him and his wife to pay for my cost of living, but I did not expect to also have to contribute so much financially to my Dad’s care, including paying for gas for his car to take him where he needed to go, plus for things he needed during his life transition from his home to a retirement home and then to the nursing home he resides in now.

To increase my income, I tried to launch a project I had been working on for several years and to help pay for the anticipated and related travel costs, I applied for an American Express card so I could get to the places I expected I would need to get to in order to present my work, the Connecting the Dots … with The RESPECT PRINCIPLE book or talk. This was anticipated because by proposal only, I had garnered the interest of a Canadian and an American publisher for publication of not only the book mentioned above, but also of the complementary non-fiction, DARK HORSES, both of which still needed to be written at the time.

Unfortunately, with the job I was doing, the physical strength needed and that I was working on rebuilding, the time needed to be with my Dad and the increasing costs, I did not have the time to focus and complete the above work, so I was not able to generate the income needed to pay off the charge card, plus I had accepted credit cards that though they helped out financially at the time, have since become debts I have not been able to keep up with by earning just above minimum wage, that is, when I could work.

By the end of January 2013, I had to quit my job so I could be more available for my Dad because the retirement home he was living in wanted to charge extra money to provide the attention he needed so he would be safe, but he, nor we, had the money to pay for such service. We tried to get the benefit from his union, but the “qualifiers” (which I can explain more fully at your request) has made those benefits inaccessible.

By Easter Sunday of 2013, the retirement’s home way of managing father was to get approval to overmedicate him, which they did. As a result, instead of walking his normal route, he wandered off another way and was only found at after 7 pm when the people whose property he had ventured and became incapacitated upon, discovered him and called the ambulance. Right now, we are searching for a lawyer, who works on contingency, to sue the home for neglect because they did not call me, as they did for all other reasons, to inform me our Dad had not shown up for supper. Nor did they call after supper, which is even more unusual because he sat at a table where three of the four required a staff member’s assistance to eat and where Dad was placed because he needed the constant encouragement to sit down and eat instead of getting up to walk. How they “realized” Dad was missing was when my sister showed up from out of town unexpectedly asking for my Dad. After quickly searching the home, my sister and her daughter drove twenty minutes around the village looking for my Dad, but returned to the home without success. While discussing options with the nurse in charge, both saw an ambulance race by and they followed it, discovering my Dad as he was being lifted from the ground, his clothes soaked from a fall in a snow-melt pond, the fabric and flesh ripped off of his knee by the gravel he had been pushing his knee against for hours as he struggled to get up. He was in deep shock, pain and experiencing hypothermia.

I would say needless, but that isn’t true or I would not be writing this letter that the “incident” resulted in a change of plans for Dad’s care; one that has incurred even additional personal costs of money and time that have also been prohibitive in generating more income and debt repayment.

After his stay in the hospital, my brother and I had to quickly choose to relocate him to a second choice nursing home that was further away. Within two weeks, his new home, now a nursing/long-term care home called to inform us they did not have the staff budget to manage his special needs of walking past exhaustion that has resulted in 13 falls in the past 10 months that we are aware of, several of which required emergency care via an ambulance, most of which have resulted in blows to his head, either by falling on his face or smashing the back of his head, often requiring staples or sutures for his injury. As a result, I’ve had to be available at the drop of a hat to fulfill the care the home cannot provide, plus ensure he was what he needs, take his wife to visit him, keep my brother informed, make and take him to appointments, pick him up at the hospital, pay for gas to get to him, etc. etc. etc.

Add to his injuries and combined illnesses, our Dad is also trying to adapt to living in a nursing home without his wife, who, not only because of her own health challenges and fears, refused to move with him in July of 2012 and demanded our family have our Dad removed from their home. Till then, our Dad had lived with her for 27 years. Prior to that, my Dad lived with my mother for almost 25 years; prior to that my Dad lived with his parents, so he is also dealing with the shock of being abandoned by his wife and since we can no longer visit as easily and readily, by his family.

Additionally, due to complications from my childhood and during my Dad and Mom’s separation, my Dad and I were estranged for most of the years he lived with his second wife, so being back here to take care of my Dad has been necessary in many ways for us both.

Almost twenty years ago, after a series of “unfortunate events” I caved under embarrassment, shame, guilt, a huge lack of confidence and a very low Respect Level for myself and as a result, for others, I did not stand up and take good care of myself or my responsibilities … because I didn’t believe I could. Even when the Bankruptcy Trustee told me to move west and get back on my feet and then pay off what I owed, the psychological damage was so deep I did not have the confidence or courage so I filed for bankruptcy and hid away like some criminal. In my naivety, I also made the decision with no real understanding of the consequences to follow me for years.

I am telling you this because you need to know who I am and not who or your employees may have judged me to be by my past poor choices and current circumstances. That is not who I am. I am not that cowering girl/woman any longer trying to run and hide away because I don’t know what to do or don’t believe in myself and my abilities to make things right … instead I am a healed, confident woman who is doing her best with what I have to work with to make her Dad’s remaining months the best I can for him … and for myself.

Several weeks ago, I had to quit yet another part-time, minimum wage job I had for less than three months because I had to leave several times during my shifts to get to my Dad who had fallen again, again and again. I also need to move out of my brother’s basement, which I had to move into last May when I could no longer afford to pay rent, and move close to Dad in Lucknow so getting to him over the winter months will not be impaired by road conditions, which has made securing work in Lucknow difficult, while living in Kincardine, plus not having the money to get a place in Lucknow, has made regular employment not feasible. Plus, there is the cost of running and maintaining Dad’s car to get me and him where we need to go.

The net results are:
1. My body is recovering from the physically-exhaustive work of slugging thirty to forty pound product boxes for several hours at Zehrs because the years of not taking very good care of myself because I didn’t believe I was worth it was taking a rapid toll on my health
2. My work ethic, confirmed by the staff at Zehrs, who saw what a hard-worker I am and reminded me too, means I am putting all my energy into generating enough money for me to not only pay my debts but to afford the lifestyle I am capable of living … with honesty, integrity and a high level of Respect for myself and others
3. That income will come in part from free-lancing writing, which I started to submit yesterday and which will pay $1.00 a word. I won an Honorable Mention award a few years ago, plus I have been published before, so this is not a pie-in-the sky idea
4. The other income will come from my global initiative, Connecting the Dots … with The RESPECT PRINCIPLE. I just launched a website, http://www.kaitlinatrepanier.com that links to my blog http://www.therespectprinciple.com. I am also on Twitter, Linked In and Facebook
5. The book release is targeted for October 15, 2013 which will generate a high ROI since I am going to publish the book under my own sole proprietorship, DARK HORSES PRODUCTIONS and I am in the process of securing sponsorship for the book and for a North American tour
6. The fee for me to speak to schools and organizations about how The RESPECT PRINCIPLE will benefit individuals and collectives is $350.00, plus taxes and if required, travel and accommodation expenses.
7. The fee for a school or group to purchase The SCHOOL PERFORMANCE PACKAGE, IS $650.00, plus taxes and if required, travel and accommodation expenses.
8. I’ve just launched The RESPECT PRINCIPLE LEGACY CONTEST, which schools can enter so their school is the first school to host and present the Connecting the Dots … with The RESPECT PRINCIPLE first SCHOOL PRESENTATION PACKAGE and for them to go down in history … leaving their legacy … of not only being the first school to host and present, but also of wanting to Raise the Respect Level of their school, community and their individual lives … which is a much better tactic for dealing with bullying and bystander behavior.

Now you know who I am, or at least, you have a much, truer picture. I am not out to screw anyone out of any money owed. On the contrary, I will take great satisfaction in not only repaying my current debts but those debts written off in bankruptcy years ago … for that has always been my intent. I just didn’t know when, but the time is drawing close … I just have to keep moving forward, being there for my Dad during his last months, while I also do work that provides me the flexibility and income to care for us both on all levels.

In summary, I will not be declaring bankruptcy for I will not do that to myself or to you because my Respect Level is now high enough to make that happen. Now you know all of this I trust you also know that when I have the money to repay you, I will repay you … with even more interest than what you expect.

In the meantime, if you see the benefit to your company and yourself of increasing people’s RESPECT LEVEL, then I invite you to contribute personally or to sponsor the global initiative, Connecting the Dots … with The RESPECT PRINCIPLE.

Thank you for treating me respectfully as a person doing her best to deal with the challenges life has presented me, as I am doing for you. Best wishes for your continued success based on the highest RESPECT LEVEL achievable …

All Rights Reserved by DARK HORSES PRODUCTIONS/KAITLIN A. TREPANIER, Connecting the Dots … with The RESPECT PRINCIPLE Developer, Author, Speaker, Playwright, Altruistic Entrepreneur, and Human Rights Activist … because every child should know, by their own experience, they are valued … RESPECTED